


silent and starving

by crownedcarl



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:55:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6347134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedcarl/pseuds/crownedcarl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry asks Leonard what he wants, once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silent and starving

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [[授权翻译] 悄然而饥渴/Silent and Starving](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7207583) by [kiy900](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiy900/pseuds/kiy900)



> honestly ? i don't even know. this is an experiment masquerading as a fic & the conclusion here is that i have no shame. you'll find allusions to mental illness (depression, dissociation) within this fic & the relationship between barry & snart is depicted as an Unhealthy one. no archive/trigger warnings apply. title from pablo neruda

He’s in an unfamiliar bed far away from home, a soft sheet draped across the parts of his body that he’s ashamed of.

Barry exhales and the chilly air prickles at his skin. He’s naked. He doesn’t move.

Across the room, Leonard sits at a desk that’s worn by the ages and stained by clumsy hands and careless smokers. The wood is dark and proud; the floor is bare and cold. 

Leonard is illuminated in the blue light from the computer screen he’s reading from. Barry thinks that he looks unknowable like this, his body held very still, as if he’s resisting some impulse to turn his head and slide his eyes over.

The room is quiet. Outside, the world seems content to move on without them for a little while.

There’s something about this that makes Barry’s stomach tighten with dread. It puts a tremble in his throat. It takes his skin away.

Leonard is quiet, immovable. He is stone. He glances over, once, eyes on the shape that Barry’s body makes beneath the sheets, long legs and tapered waist, countless places that he’s already tasted. The wind makes the windows rattle and Barry closes his eyes, the lull of darkness rendering him half-asleep.

A minute later, the legs of a chair screech back across a hardwood floor. Footsteps approach the bed. Barry lets himself open his eyes.

He extends a hand to Leonard and Leonard fucks him like it’s the merciful thing to do.

-

A time will come when Barry won’t need this.

He has to believe that. Leonard never kisses him unless Barry asks for it and he’s tired of asking – he’s tired of being given permission and pleading for the things that should come naturally, the things that mean he isn’t alone in this desire. It’s enormous. It disgusts him.

Leonard never asks him to stay the night but he never tells Barry to leave, either. Barry doesn’t understand what that means, what invisible lines he’s overstepping and which ones he has left behind completely, but Leonard lets him stay. He hopes that it means something.

Greed like this shouldn’t be rewarded. Barry wants to walk away with something to prove that this was real – a shame he can’t shake, a bruise that won’t fade, the memory of Leonard whispering _I want to fuck you_ as if it’s the most honest thing he’s ever said. These things are few and far between. Barry knows that he can’t keep doing this.

After, because it’s always _after_ , Barry stands in a bare bathroom illuminated by a single lightbulb, staring at a stranger’s reflection, his eyes hollowed out. The stairs creak, the door squeals open and then slams shut. Leonard is gone because he’s always gone; he’s gone even with his hands on Barry and his words taking him apart –

 _After_ , Barry stands in that bathroom and defiantly meets his own eyes, flinching away. _This isn’t what I wanted_ , he thinks. _This isn’t what I should be doing_.

-

Barry asks Leonard what he wants, once.

He only asks once because that’s what he can get away with and he isn’t brave enough to push. He only asks once because the answer is instant and honest; Leonard pauses where he’s seated between Barry’s thighs, thumb pressed into that vulnerable hollow of his ankle, his mouth brushing against the inside of Barry’s knee.

Barry only asks Leonard what he wants, once.

“I want to break your heart,” Leonard tells him; he fucks Barry hard enough that the bed thumps against the wall and a strip of peeling paint falls to the sheets, but he doesn’t fuck Barry hard enough that he forgets anything at all.

-

Barry wants to go home. He’s been in this hollow, timeless place for what feels like days – he sleeps, he wakes, he lets Leonard fuck him. He drinks from a chipped glass and he stares out of the dirty windows, the breeze carrying a chill to his skin when he leaves the bed. He leaves the bed to think, but Leonard doesn’t notice him if he isn’t stretched out and breathless, begging for things that can’t be his.

He calls Iris. Her voice is the most familiar thing in the world; she tells him she misses him and that Joe is worried, her tone changing when she asks him where he’s been.

 _I don’t know_ , Barry almost says, a moment of confusion making him turn to look at Leonard; he’s quiet and focused, not looking at Barry at all. “I’ve been staying with a friend,” he tells Iris and if his back wasn’t to Leonard, he’d notice the way that his mouth purses, eyes darkening.

Theirs will never be an easy truce, but it’s something. It isn’t worth the pain. It isn’t worth stopping yet, either.

-

Caitlin turns pitying eyes on him when Barry comes back; his hair is windswept and his posture is exhausted, something in his chest feeling misplaced and sharp. He doesn’t say a word about where he’s been other than the vague excuse of catching up with an old friend, but he doesn’t have many of those.

Caitlin gives him pity and Cisco gives him something closer to concern, but he can’t quite meet Barry’s eyes that day when he says that Captain Cold was absent, too, while Barry was gone. They don’t keep track of the day-to-day activities of the notorious criminals of this city, but Captain Cold was nowhere to be found during an exhibition where each piece on display was worth a small fortune.

Barry doesn’t want the pity and shakes the concern. Iris understands. She takes him out for coffee and says “Where have you been, Barry?” with a brittle smile that looks sad, too sad and Barry knows that he put it there. Before he can give her the same explanation – the same excuse – that he gave everyone else, Iris looks him in the eyes and shakes her head.

He leaves Leonard feeling dirty, every time. He comes to Leonard feeling dirty, too.

“No, you’ve been…gone. I know that. But where have _you_ been? The real you?”

He falters and quiets down. Iris never gets her answer, not the one she wants.

-

Joe won’t leave. Barry refuses to look at him and a stubborn, jagged knife between his ribs won’t let him breathe. This isn’t a conversation that he wants to be having, but this corner is one he’s backed himself into and he doesn’t have the heart to run away. He runs enough, as it is. He runs from things he doesn’t like and he runs to things that he can’t have.

“Kiddo,” Joe says with an air of helplessness, broad shoulders slumped, dark eyes worried. His voice fills up the whole room. Barry feels small, listening to him, staring down at his knees. “I know you and this, Barry – this isn’t you. This isn’t what you want.”

There’s a lump in Barry’s throat and a childish retort on his tongue; _you don’t know me_ or _you can’t tell me what to do_ but Joe does know him and he isn’t trying to tell Barry to do anything. His voice is very tired when he says “What are you doing, Barry? What made you so sad?”

 _Don’t_ , Barry thinks; it unsettles him when he realizes that his eyes are dry and burning, something on the inside close to breaking in half.

“I don’t know,” he confesses in a whisper, eventually, miles away from his own body that’s useless and hungry and still empty after all the nights spent staring at a man that doesn’t love him. “I just – I just _wanted_ -“

A hand grasps his shoulder, tugs him close. His breathing is ragged. “I wish you’d tell me how to help,” Joe says, the darkness a mercy, hiding Barry’s expression. He feels exposed. He feels as if forgiveness is something he needs and doesn’t deserve.

-

Barry returns to Leonard like an addict looking for a fix.

That’s the thing about addiction, what makes it so deadly; you’ll need more, eventually.

“I’m busy,” Leonard says as Barry walks into his safe-house, not sparing Barry a glance. “Get your rocks off somewhere else.”

 _Fuck you_ , Barry thinks, fist clenching. He plays mute. He sits down quietly and begins to flip through a magazine, not registering the words. Minutes pass in silence until Leonard heaves a sigh, his footsteps kicking up dust as he approaches. “The hell do you keep coming back for?”

Barry looks up, wondering the same thing. He thinks he might be sick, chasing after a man that couldn’t care less about him. “Kid,” Leonard continues, “Have you ever heard of an exercise in futility?”

 _Shut up_.

His fingers work Leonard’s shirt free of its buttons, one by one. There is no protest as Barry traces scarred skin with the edge of his thumbnail, eyes glazed. “What do you _want_ , Barry?”

Leonard has never asked him that, before. Leonard wants to break his heart.

Barry can’t answer him, but once he’s face down on the dirty floor, there’s no need for words.

-

A note is on the fridge when Barry wakes up, late morning, cold where the duvet has slipped off his body during the night. He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling for a long time, listening to the storm raging outside.

It’s almost peaceful.

He dresses slowly; checks his phone to find a text from Iris. It reads _I love you_.

A smile curves his mouth for a fleeting moment but that moment is enough. Barry looks around the deserted warehouse, eyes drifting back to the note on the fridge.

_Fun while it lasted, but I’ve got places to be. See you around._

His laughter echoes through the dilapidated space and Barry wonders if he can count this as a victory. Leonard walked out first. Leonard didn’t win; Barry’s heart is bruised and resentful but intact.

“Took you long enough,” he murmurs, stepping outside, into the storm.

-

“I know you are reading this poem  
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear  
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed  
and the open valise speaks of flight  
but you cannot leave yet.”

\- Adrienne Rich, "An Atlas of the Difficult World"


End file.
